A blog itself isn't really a business—it's more of a platform for other income streams. Your content alone won't likely make you money. Instead, you'll have to get advertisers, sell services like consulting or speaking, use affiliate marketing to get a percentage of sales from links people click on your blog, or maybe offer products like ebooks or premium content to actually generate income. ProBlogger has an excellent post about these different ways you can make money.

When you start a blog to make money you often forget that it will require patience – but if you’ve been at this a few months and still aren’t seeing any income, you may be making one of these very basic mistakes. Lesson 13 will go over identifying your problem areas and provide some solutions to help you conquer these issues and start making money with your blog!

Thankfully, you needn’t be tech savvy to start a blog (we certainly aren’t). You don’t need to know how to code or design to build your blog (we still don’t). You don’t need much money to create a blog (you can get a free domain and host your site for just a few bucks a month). And you don’t need to spend a ton of time setting up your blog, either (you can set up your blog in less than an hour).

My understanding is that you have to subscribe/pay for the business version of Word Press in order to use any of the monetizing functions. I think you should clearly state this in this article at the beginning. I think there is a degree of bait and switch here if people are just signing up for the free subscription and then finding out they have to pay for a subscription to make money. I am ok with that, it just needs to be stated up front everywhere.
Can you teach an old dog new tricks? I hope so. I have 78 years of knowledge to share on food, music, and other topics. Your instructions are amazing, wonderful, and hopefully easy enough for even an old tech-idiot like me to understand. I’ll sign up for your course, but I want to express my admiration and appreciation for such a fine product as you have created.
Thanks for sharing the good article about blog startup. Its not an easy to maintain blog, I also started to writing an articles for my blog but still success is far from me but never give up. Your article is quite impressive and motivated for beginners even i also read whole article and your word inspired me a lot to improve my blog. You are my mentor now. Keep writing and keep smile always.
Blogging is a LEGIT way to make ALOT of money – (I am updating this as of February of 2018, and this is more true now than ever). I make good money doing this, I had no experience when I started, and in the grand scheme of life, I started making money very quickly.) So if your burning questions was “is blogging REALLY profitable?” the answer is a resounding YES – it sure can be!)

Best part about this book: the updated 2014 edition, which is what I bought. The blogging environment was a lot different back in 2010 - 2012 (and a lot easier back then), so I knew that books written back then would be out of date for me for now. Ruth's book was one of relatively few books that had been written or updated in 2014 and onward. Very well done, lots of non-obvious tips and tricks, and lots of clear explanation not just about HOW to do things, but WHY.

My blog is hosted with Siteground, and I love them because a) they are crazy affordable (You can get a great discount on their shared plans right here – it’s less than 4$/month!) and b) they have AMAZING 24 hour tech support that never makes me feel stupid for being computer confused. This is critical. And perhaps most importantly c) my blog has never been down with them. Ever. (Downtime = lost revenue. Period.)
You’ve given me some interesting things to think about, and no mistake. At the moment, video plays a supporting role and audio none at all, so I guess I’m going to have to consider repackaging new posts to these delivery methods. It was something that hadn’t occurred to me at all until I found this post. My main problem is that I have a face that is good for radio, a voice best suited to silence and a budget that won’t allow me to remedy either one. However, I guess with practice the voice will improve and the face can be replaced by graphics {grin}.
Focus your efforts on these keywords for now. Choose a big one that will take longer to reach, as well as three to four additional terms you're going to try to rank for. These should all be similar! Then, you're going to include these keywords in each blog post you make in various combinations. Always focus your posts on one term, and include the others only if they make sense. As you focus on these similar keywords the search engines will start to rank you more highly because your blog is tightly focused and relevant to what you're targeting.
I’d like to start a blog, I feel it’s easy but with all the info don’t know where to start. The goal is to have fun with it and earn potential income. How do I come up with great topics people would go for. I tried this kinda before but didn’t complete process. It gave me headache 🤦🤦. By the way thanks for your blogging education. Very informative..😊
To make your site safe, all you need to do is turn on the SSL certificate. It controls the data transfer on your site and makes it unreadable to nosy people who might sniff the data from an outside. But before you start worrying that only technicians and internet experts know how to do this, let us show you how you can get a FREE secure connection in just a few steps:
Sign up for affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a very popular way of monetizing a blog because it capitalizes on your readers’ trust of you. If your posts always deliver quality content, then your audience is more likely to trust product or service recommendations. You can provide links or recommendations to relevant products and get a commission from any sales driven by your blog.[44][45]

These three factors will determine the amount of money you make. Estimating exactly what you will make is pretty difficult, but a high traffic blog on the right topic has the potential to bring in several thousand dollars every month. Of course, many people earn less than this, and some earn even more. In fact, it has been estimated that some top AdSense publishers earn nearly $2 million per year just from AdSense.

If you are using a free blog hosting service instead of your own domain name, you must provide high quality content with a limited number of relevant links or risk being shut down. If you are only interested in writing short, quick product reviews in order to earn money, you will need to host your own blog. Be warned that low-content, high-link blogs are a less reliable, though lower effort, way to earn money.
The problem is many of our blog idols are very much like I have been in the past, spreading the gospel of large numbers (not always overtly – but displaying your traffic counter as social proof does make people see big numbers as an indication of success). People then pursue the same path, just like you share in your story – quantity instead of quality, when it should be the other way around.
“How to Blog for Profit is hands down the best blogging book I’ve ever read. I cannot recommend it highly enough and will be telling every new and seasoned blogger I know to get a copy! This book is comprehensive, but not overwhelming, and packed with amazing information. And I don’t say that lightly. You see, by implementing the Pinterest strategies that Ruth suggests in her book, I have increased my site traffic by over 500,000 unique visitors per month. For real. Ruth is brilliant! What more can I say?!” -Crystal Paine @ Money Saving Mom

If you can build a relationship with 10 early readers and work with them to pinpoint a challenge you're interested in building a physical or digital product for, focus next on repeatedly solving that problem yourself, then develop a plan of action for how you can personally help those 10 people solve that problem in their own unique situations as well. This'll be very manually at first, but that's necessary.

Selecting a good keyword can be helpful. Search engines function through SEO (search engine optimization), which ranks search results based on how many keywords they have related to the person’s search query. However, you don’t want to get so wrapped up in SEO that your readers feel your blog is generic. Developing strong brand identity is the best thing you can do to draw readers to your blog.

Industry Blogs. These are specialized to a particular field or industry. They’re a good choice if you’re already an expert on something and want to share that expertise. Because you have to constantly stay on top of new information and developments in that industry, you need to make sure you’re comfortable with researching and understanding your topic.

With a business account, you’ll have access to Pinterest Analytics, as well as the ability to create “Rich Pins.” You can also pay Pinterest to promote your pins with a business account, but that’s definitely not necessary. We experimented with about $50 worth of promoted pins before figuring out we could make our pins go viral on our own, without the help of ads.
Vision. The reason our site design looks good is because we have a great host, we have a great theme, and most important, we had a vision of how we wanted our blog to look. Once we had the vision, we worked hard to make that vision a reality. (Note: neither of us had any design experience before starting a blog.) It’s hard to create a beautiful blog if you don’t know what you want it to look like.

I would like to work from home and am looking into blogging. I literally have no idea what I’d write about (I’m interested in several different things that are not related to one another) and am assuming I’d need sponsorship to actually make money. Since I know what assuming gets me, I am doing my homework before I do anything else. Thanks for all the info and any other advice is appreciated.

Students, Professionals, and anyone else who desires to promote and control their personal brand should consider creating a simple WordPress website (a.k.a. blog). You have complete control over the content displayed and the information provided. Furthermore, when people use a search engine to look you up, your website will often be near the top of search results. This allows you to control your public image.

While compensation may influence the products we discuss, it doesn’t impact the qualitative and quantitative analysis demonstrated in each article and review. We try to objectively evaluate financial products and recommend those that are most beneficial to readers. Our site does not feature every company or financial product available on the market, and nothing written should be interpreted as financial advice. We are not responsible for your financial decisions. For more information, see our full disclaimer.
These types of tools will help you build two essential pages too few blogs use. They are the Start Here page and the Resources page. Creating Home, About, Blog and Contact pages are obvious. The Start Here page, on the other hand, allows you to build a page full of links to your greatest and most valuable content. It can help you highlight the content you want to convert. The Resources page is one you can use to build a list of links (including affiliate links) for the tools you use in your niche as well as anything else you feel would be useful to your audience, such as books and courses.
Choose your topic. The best blogs focus on topics that you, the blogger, are passionate about. This topic can be anything that you believe you have enough to say about to interest others. It works best if you can find a “niche” that is not being fully exploited.[9] There are several important things to keep in mind when choosing your blog topic:[10]

Indirect Income – later on in my blogging journey opportunity has come for ‘indirect’ income streams. As my blogs and profile grew as a result of my blogging I was able to sell my services as a speaker and consultant and was offered the opportunity to author a book with the publisher Wiley. Later I was able to start an event for bloggers which also made money. None of this income came directly from the blog – but rather it came ‘because’ of my blog.

Understand the difference between total revenue and net income. Most income reports tout total revenue. Net income or profit (what really matters) is often buried in the post. I came across an income report recently with a super impressive number in the title (and Pinterest image). It was total revenue. Not until I read the whole post did I learn this blogger spent well over half their total revenue on Facebook Ads alone. On top of that, they had an extensive list of expenses. By the end of the post I realized I had netted more than they did the previous month.
One of my favorite ways to get readers to my blog is to post links on my social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter. This is great, because not only do your friends see the link, but if your friends share the link with their friends it automatically multiplies your readers. If you have created high-quality content on your blog then social media is a great way for your blog to go viral.
Again, it doesn't take much to become a blogger, but you're going to have to work harder and smarter to find success. It all boils down to bringing something unique to the table while providing high-quality, valuable content and promoting it well. You'll need to overcome issues like writer's block and stay focused while working towards your goals. Do you have experience in growing blogs? Be sure to share your own strategies in the comments below.
Bloggers like Michael Hyatt, Yaro Starak, Brian Clark, and Ramsay of Blog Tyrant (among many others) have learned to invest time, energy, and money on creating timeless and useful products. This information comes in the form of eBooks, software, themes, plugins, online courses, etc. so that their audience can learn and advance their understanding in a short amount of time.

However, to the victors go the spoils. Those that start a blog and don't actually quit, continuing to push forward, make tremendous amounts of income over time. Not overnight. Nothing good comes quickly. You'll have to put in the work. But this is by far one of the best ways that you can make money online as long as you understand what you're doing.

Great post, thank you! I found this to be very useful. I have just got into the Pay Per Click method and it is a great way of building a passive income. Due to my niche, I have found it difficult to source good affiliate networks, but just today I have revisited the accounts I set up on Link Share and CJ, to my surprise they offer a good range of affiliate programs, many of which cater to my niche blog topic :)

Design isn’t about crazy colors, multiple fonts, and tons of images and videos. It’s about making the experience of your reader as enjoyable as possible. That’s why the first thing you should think about when it comes to transitioning from the basics of learning how to start a blog over to perfecting your design, isn’t what you can add. But what you can take away.
According to Mark W. Schaefer and Stanford A. Smith, co-authors of Born to Blog, there are five traits or roles that are necessary for blogging. Schaefer and Smith maintain that everyone has at least one of these traits, and some of the most popular bloggers probably have three or four of them. The idea is to recognize that trait or role that you play, build upon it, and then use it to create a successful blog.
Hi Sydney! Not many blogs pay for articles and guest posts, but I think what you’d be interested in is freelancing writing. Creating content for other websites is definitely an option if you want the flexibility to work from home writing. You can check out my interview with Gina about how to get started freelance writing. I think it just comes down to what you’re more interested in doing. Do you want to create a blog that you are able to share more of your story and build relationships with readers? Or do you just want to straight up write articles that fill another site’s requirements? I hope you find the perfect situation for you!
If you just want to earn an income from writing, I would go the freelance route, like what Gina teaches. I can definitely see how it can seem too good to be true, but you have to look at these fields, either blogging or freelance, as a job/business. It’s definitely not a get rich quick thing. Those who become successful work hard, just as anyone in a more conventional job does. What I love about Gina is she is an incredibly hard worker. If you look at her story, she started out in freelance while working full time, so she was getting up at 4:30 in the morning and working weekends so she could grow her income. She was so determined. Her first month she made $805. Amazing!
For example, the hypothetical “haircare.com” tells readers what the blog is about, but it doesn’t offer any “angle” on what kinds of hair care advice your blog offers. The hypothetical “Frizzfighters.com” is still clearly about hair care, but it gives off a fun vibe through its alliterative name and communicates your strong brand identity (funky, focused on a particular hair issue, hip).

Firslty thank you for sharing all this great info, so far everything you have explained has worked. However I am stuck on the “choosing my theme”, I am hesitant because I don’t know if I am STUCK with whatever I choose and at this point I want a longterm awesome working blog and website. Can I try themes out to actually understand what I want or do I just choose and then that’s it I am stuck with it. Most importantly I want to be able to add “ads” so I can make some income from my site, just to cover some of my expenses and time, but I have no idea which themes allow this and how do I find out. Frustrated and stuck in limbo for a couple weeks now. Thanks for your help

I guess, based on my computer abilities, that I knew that blogging wouldn’t be easy but I just wish someone had been a little more HONEST with me about what it would take. I also wish, that the first “how to start a blog tutorial” I ever used had held my hand throughout the process a little more. (I am a classic victim of the how to start a blog tutorials that ONLY take you through step one!)